The only reason to write is because you want to change people's beliefs. The only reason to love is because you want to become bigger than who you are alone. The only reason to play this game of life is because you want to change the world.

Friday, November 15, 2013

It's Your Life. Are You Missing It?

Imagine if you were to create a painting or a sculpture.Something of beauty.Imagine feeling the medium in your hands…the
coolness of the clay and it’s suppleness as it warms in your palms and fingers
and becomes more pliable.Feel it on
your finger tips as you spread it, mold and cup it, getting it to bend
smoothly to your vision of beauty….Imagine
the time it takes to get it just right.Then the time it takes to fire it, if it must be hardened.Imagine it finished.Being admired by people for its beauty, it’s
simplicity, it’s…youness….Hear their ‘ooohs’ and ‘ahhhs’ as they compliment
you on your vision and talent.

Or imagine the chalky odor of Gesso on a freshly stretched canvass.And how acrid the paint smells as you twist off
the smooth little plastic paint caps and create rich colorful globs of on a palette.
Little wells of glimmer and loveliness.Hear the swishing as you start to apply the paint
to the canvas.Feel the brush in your
fingers.How long is it and what kind of
bristles does it have?How hard is it?How long does it take to bring your vision to
life?Hours?Days?Months? Years?

Or maybe art isn’t your thing and you prefer food.Maybe you get a creative urge to bake some
sort of pastry and you mix a rich, silky batter by hand with a polished whisk
until its shiny and glossy; full of divine cocoa or vanilla aromas. Or maybe the scent of bitter orange
and lemon rise through your nostrils and fill the space around you with their sweet,
citrusy scent?

Imagine how your masterpiece ribbons when you pour it from
the slick mixing bowl into the baking pan.How shiny it looks and how sweet and rich it smells. Imagine setting it in
the oven protectively, the blast of warmth hitting your face as you set it in
place.The feel of the timer as you
punch the buttons or twist the dial and set the countdown to your gastronomic ecstasy.You are a God, forging your Opus with flame,
sugar and flour: like Zeus shaping humans out of mud.How your house fills with the sweet aroma as
it blooms until finally you remove it from the oven.You let it cool and frost it before presenting your masterpiece to the
people you love: an offering of your creativity and joy.Your inner desire to share what you are with
others.

Now, imagine taking this beautiful piece of work that you invested
your time and energy on.That you invested
your sense and sensual appreciation into.That you conceived of, dreamed up and labored into being.Imagine this thing that you made.That came from you and your energy, your
desires, your wishes and passions.Imagine taking it and then throwing it into a public toilet. Where the rich aromas of paint, clay or sugar
and cocoa mingle with the stench of filth and excrement.And imagine standing there in that public
head and encouraging people to go into that stall and destroy your creation in
the most foul and disrespectful way any human can.

Pretty absurd, right? Pretty awful. And yet we do this with
our lives every day.We take how many
years to create the ultimate piece of art each of us has to showcase in the world:
our
lives, and we throw them in the toilet.We sacrifice them to jobs that squelch the beauty out of us because we
are told by social proof from the time we are children that this is what we
must do.We let teachers steal our gifts
and friends convince us that we are less than we really are.We settle for lovers who do not touch us or
gaze into our eyes and say, “You are beautiful.”We let doctors corrupt our understanding of
heath.We let TV feed us cynicism and dysfunction
like geese being force fed for foie gras: in both cases the end being the same….We drug ourselves on food and booze and superficiality
until we are numb.

And what’s the result after we take our masterpieces and toss
them in the can?

We isolate ourselves from each other. We close ourselves off
with cynicism and anger. We talk only about ourselves and avoid making real connections
with others.We hold anyone who wishes
to get to know us with contempt, because after all, we tossed out masterpiece in
a fucking crapper, so what the hell could they possibly see in us?We are suspicious and jaded and, goddamnit
we like it that way! Because, fuck it, we’re gonna show the world how much we
hate it because, after all, it forced us to give up our beauty didn’t it?

Or did it?

I’ve said it before, to you, my friends.Either in my books or blog posts, or even to
some of you in person.You cannot create
beauty in this world if you are not willing to make the space for that that
thing to be defended.Whether it be our
ideas, our art, our romance, enthusiasm, prosperity or hope.You cannot create beauty and then throw it in
the fucking trash, because it is worse than if you’d never even tried to make
beauty to begin with.And if you choose not
to create beauty, right here, right now, in this world full of billions of people because the price is just too high to learn how to defend it: if you are
choosing not to make that magical thing that can grow between people and
animals and nature when beauty is present, then you are not only throwing your masterpiece
away, but you’re pissing on what you were made for.

You may say, “But Hayden I’ve been hurt.”

To you I say, “What artist hasn’t been?”

“You are an artist. And your life is the beautiful thing you
are creating. From great hurt can come great understanding and profound revelation
about the nature of what we are.But only if you choose to see it that way; if
you choose to remain open and childlike in your appreciation of the world.

When I was a boy, I used look at around at people who
claimed they wanted to be happy, to be in love and find romance, to be
prosperous and enthusiastic and creative and I’d watch them push those things away
every time they showed up in their lives.Every chance they got to be happy, they chose victimhood, sadness and
self-pity instead: because those things were easier.They were familiar.

I used to say to a friend of mine back then, “Most people
spend their lives just missing it.”It
was a horrifying thought, that propelled me to look further for answers.It’s a thought that that I’ll leave you with
now.

And I’ll leave you with this bit of hope.There are two big keys to gaining a life that
full of romance, enthusiasm, prosperity and hope that I’m going to share with
you now...One is laughter, the other is sincerity.If you can take those two clues I’ve given
you and do something meaningful with them, nothing will stop you ever again.Because they will lead to everything that’s
really important in this world.

Anatomy of a Wish

The Year of the Bull

Forbidden

Taboo

About Me

Welcome to the blog of Hayden Chance, author of Amazon Bestselling, Dream Oblivion; bestselling Urban fantasy, Anatomy of a Wish; the adult fairytale, The Year of the Bull; and the Dark Urban Fantasies, Taboo and Forbidden. Your ex was wrong about you. Fairytales do come true for guys like you... ;)